I hope that my first read of 2026 is not an indication of how the rest of my reading year is going to go because Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel Atmosphere was just not for me. My first experience with Reid was Daisy Jones and the Six and I loved it. I was so sure that she was going to be a favourite author for me, and so I started with her backlist and read One True Loves and it was a no from me. Since it came before Daisy Jones though, I thought I would read something after, so I tried Malibu Rising. Also a no. I would not have picked up Atmosphere for that reason alone, but a book about lady astronauts was of zero interest to me anyway. Then it got selected for my book club.
Joan Goodwin has a “PhD focusing on the analysis of magnetic structures in the solar corona” but she is “spending her expertise teaching eighteen-year-olds the definition of a parsec.”
Vanessa Ford is an aeronautical engineer who is also a pilot. She is “tall and straight, her shoulders broad.” The first time Joan lays eyes on her, she thinks “That’s an astronaut.”
These two woman are astronaut candidates in 1979. Historically, Sally Ride was the first woman in space. She went to space in 1983. Fictionally, Joan and Vanessa count themselves among “The Six.”
“The Six” became part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, a selection of 35 candidatestapped to begin training at Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1978. And the women weren’t the only ones making history.The class of astronauts in training was also NASA’s first to include people of color — three African Americans and one Asian American.” – CNN
Joan and Vanessa become friends, and then more than friends, a relationship that they keep secret for a variety of reasons. I found the whole love story part of this book super cringey. You want me to believe that two women, smart enough to be tapped as astronauts, are sneaking around and having inane conversations about how the sky now makes sense because of the other person. I mean, you wanted to be an astronaut, right? You never wanted to know anything about the sky until you looked into the eyes of a beautiful astronomer? Yikes.
Beyond the cringe, I just found the writing pedestrian. Loads of people on the WWW were calling Atmosphere a six star read, a book that made them bawl their eyes out. It made me want to tear my hair out. I didn’t particularly care about any of these characters. Joan’s sister, Barbara, is selfish and miserable (until she finds a rich man). Barbara’s daughter, Frances, is precocious and meant to be a surrogate daughter for Joan because they are way closer than mother and daughter. Even that relationship felt inauthentic.
One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is to reflect on the reading year that was, and Jamie aka The Perpetual Page-Turner makes this very easy to do by providing this list of questions.
Number Of Books I Read: 60 Number of Re-Reads: 1 (The Paper Palace, which was a book club selection. This was my third time reading it and I still love it.) Genre I Read The Most From: literary fiction/YA (not really genres, I know – but in those categories I read a lot of thrillers, mysteries, realistic fic)
According to the list I sent out (see that list at the end of this post), Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner was my favourite book of the year. In 2024, Zentner’s novel The Serpent King was my second favourite novel of the year. Another of Zentner’s books, In the Wild Light, also made my Top Twenty list this year. So, I guess you could say I am a fan. I doubt anything is going to knock Goodbye Days from the number one spot.
Runner Up:
2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?
We Used to Live Here was certainly easy to read – but I found it sort of disjointed, especially as things went along. It wasn’t scary, although there were certainly some creepy moments. I didn’t finish it feeling satisfied, mostly because I wasn’t 100% sure I understood exactly what had happened. That may be my own fault rather than the book’s – so your mileage might vary. I was sure I was going to love this book, but in the end, I just didn’t.
3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?
I actually had a couple of surprises this year – books that I shouldn’t have loved, but did and vice versa.
In the LOVED category:
In the not-so-great category:
4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did)?
I don’t think I championed any one book this year, although I do my fair share of book talks at school. I also got two of my favourite readers to read my favourite book Velocity. You can read Luke’s review of the book here.
5. Favorite new author you discovered in 2025?
I will definitely be reading more from Nat Cassidy (Nestlings) and Ronald Malfi (Come With Me)
6. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?
I don’t think I read anything out of my comfort zone this year,
8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?
Both of these young protagonists go through it and are memorable because they survive.
12. Most beautifully written book read in 2025?
I read quite a few well-written books this year. Beautifully written (to my taste) would have to be The Paper Palace and I guess it counts even though it is a re-read. But if I can’t use that, perhaps Moon Road by Sarah Leipciger
13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2025?
14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2025 to finally read?
It’s not really a question of not being able to believe I waited so long to get to such-and-such a book because I have more books on my physical tbr shelf than I can reasonably expect to get to in my lifetime. So, I will just name a couple of books which have been languishing on my tbr shelf and that I finally read:
The Stopped Heart – Julie Myerson
The Servants – Michael Marshall Smith
Broken – Daniel Clay
15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2024?
“For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.” – Goodbye Days
And I was sorely disappointed by Save Me, the first book from the Maxton Hall series. I’d been waiting forever for it to be translated from German into English because I LOVE the series. None of what I love in the show exists in the book; the series makes the book a zillion times better.
18. OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!) (OTP = one true pairing if you aren’t familiar)
What I’ve said about Save Me remains true, but I am still putting James and Ruby on the list as my OTP as technically they are characters from a book that I have read, but when I think about them I think about the actors and the show.
Honourable mention to: Shannon and Johnny from Binding 13. I really did love these characters (enough that I actually went out and bought Keeping 13 and read it immediately).
19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year
21. Best Book You Read In 2025 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure/Bookstagram, Etc.:
I think that honour has to go to Stoner by John Williams. Here’s what I said at the start of my review:
John Williams’ 1965 novel Stoner probably would not have been on my reading radar without booktube. It seemed as though many young readers (people in their 20s and 30s – and yes, those are young people to me now) were reading it and talking about it and so I added it to my physical tbr pile, figuring that I would get to it eventually.
I read it and loved it and it was definitely worthy of the hype.
22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2025?
24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?
Gone to See the River Man had a pretty vivid (and often horrific) setting. The Canadian setting of Moon Road was also beautifully captured (and not at all horrific!)
25. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?
Yikes – looking back at the titles I read this year, they’re all pretty dark. I think the one book that actually made me smile/laugh (but also feel the feels) was Alison Espach’s The Wedding People.
26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2025?
27. Hidden Gem Of The Year?
Hidden from whom? I suspect that most of the books on my list are known to others, but if I were going to offer up a couple less-well-known titles I would suggest people check out Broken by Daniel Clay, a sort of To Kill a Mockingbird retelling set on a council estate in England or The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith, the story of a young boy who moves to the seaside with his stepfather and ailing mother.
28. Book That Crushed Your Soul?
No books crushed my soul this year; American politics did that.
29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2024?
Andrew Joseph White (The Spirit Bares Its Teeth) continues to impress with his horror-tinged takes on gender identity.
30. Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?
I don’t think I read a book this year that made me mad.
1. New favorite book blog/Bookstagram/Youtube channel you discovered in 2023?
Here are some Instagram accounts I enjoy: booksbythebay, fictionmatters, booksaresick, dylanjosephreads, jordys.book.club, vestcody
3. Favorite bookish related photo you took in 2025?
I mean, favourite? But here’s a picture of me with a pile of books I got at the Boys and Girls Club book sale in August. Clearly I didn’t take the picture. 🙂
4. Best bookish event that you participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, etc.)?
In December, two of my favourite people on the planet visited me when they came home and we convened the first meeting of our Book Club of 3. Since we always talk about books when we get together, in November we decided to make it slightly more formal and read the same book before the visit. We chose Stoner and had a lovely discussion.
5. Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2025?Any interaction with other readers is lovely.
6. Most challenging thing about blogging or your reading life this year?
Meeting my reading goal was hard this year; I am not sure why. I think the crazy state of the world has made it difficult to concentrate and I turned to shitty television instead of hunkering down with a book. I am looking forward to a reset.
7. Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?
Unsurprising, Corrupt had the most views with 243.
Some other interesting stats from my blogging year:
I wrote 60 posts, over 28k words. I had over 52,000 views this year, but my overall engagement is still low. I would like to think that’s because it takes a little more effort to leave a comment on a blog than it does on an Instagram post.
Jan 17, 2025 was my busiest day with 813 views. I didn’t post anything on the 17th, but I did post my review of My Brilliant Friend on Jan 13.
8. Best bookish discovery (book related sites, book stores, etc.)?
Two independent bookstores opened…neither of them in my hometown, but both places I can get to every once and awhile.
9.. Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?
Nope.
1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2025 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2025?
I am a mood reader. I can’t tell you want I will feel like reading from one moment to the next.
2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2025 (non-debut)?
See above.
3. 2025 Debut You Are Most Anticipating?
I dunno.
4. Series Ending/A Sequel You Are Most Anticipating in 2026?
I do hope to finish the Empire of the Vampire series. I read the first book in 2022! I have book two sitting on my shelf.
5. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2025
Every year I send out a Top 20 list to my friends from Litsy. I compile it late November, so it doesn’t include everything I’ve read up to the end of the year (and there are always a few bangers that are left off.)
I am certainly not the audience for this sort of book, but I purchased the sequel Keeping 13 and reading it straight away and that is something I never do. There. That’s my endorsement.
A lovely, quiet tale about eleven-year-old Mark who has moved to Brighton with his brand-new step-dad, David, and his mom, who appears to be quite ill. There were tears.
It’s a compelling, well-written mystery with lots to say about our fascination with true crime, the fetishization of victims and how, sometimes, justice just isn’t served.
White has a remarkable imagination, but this book feels especially timely given the way the rights of marginalized people are being eroded in today’s society.
A coming-of-age story about a kid who has had to grow up way too fast, who feels out of his depth, but who learns to trust himself. Made me cry on more than one occasion.
It was wonderful to read a book featuring mature characters who have lived a life, suffered a terrible loss, and then made an effort to keep moving forward.
“For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.”
Had I read it before I finished my list, Stoner would have totally made my top 20.
John Williams’ 1965 novel Stoner probably would not have been on my reading radar without booktube. It seemed as though many young readers (people in their 20s and 30s – and yes, those are young people to me now) were reading it and talking about it and so I added it to my physical tbr pile, figuring that I would get to it eventually.
Back in November when my friend (and former student) Luke and his wife, Lauren, were making their plans to come home for a visit over the holidays, they suggested a book club of three. Whenever we see each other, we always spend a lot of time talking about books and so this seemed like a good idea. I perused my shelves and suggested five titles, Stoner among them, and so that is where we landed.
Stoner is the story of William Stoner, son of impoverished Missouri farmers, who goes off to college ostensibly to take an agriculture degree, but who ends up taking a different path altogether. When the professor, Sloan, reads a sonnet and says “Mr. Shakespeare speaks to you across three hundred years, Mr. Stoner; do you hear him?”, Stoner falls in love. I also fell in love… with this book.
The novel follows Stoner through his undergraduate degree, his post graduate work, his early marriage to Edith, academic politics, the birth of his daughter, his affair. Williams doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time at any of these road stops in Stoner’s life and yet somehow we come to know him very well.
Anybody who loves literature would find touchstones in this book and, indeed, in Stoner’s own life.
Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him an awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.
Luke, Lauren, and I could all relate to the feeling of anxiety at how little we will actually be able to read over the course of our lives, and Williams managed to capture that exact feeling. I think Luke and Lauren read far more deeply that I ever did at their age. (Luke is enrolled in a PhD of Philosophy and is currently reading Proust; Lauren is a research scientist at Harvard, about to start her own PhD. You might wonder what they are doing giving up precious family time to hang out with me; I wonder the same thing myself. :-)) Even if I have read upwards of 2000 books over the course of my life, lots of them were crap.
I also had another point of intersection with Stoner, and that was his feelings about teaching.
Always, from the time he had fumbled through his first classes of freshman English, he had been aware of the gulf that lay between what he felt for his subject and what he delivered in the classroom.
Sometimes Stoner feels like he is doing a great job and sometimes he feels like everything he does is crap and that is a feeling I have experienced over the course of my career. Of course, he is teaching at university and I am a high school teacher, so there’s that.
We had quite a lively discussion about Edith’s role in Stoner’s life, too. Lauren was a lot more sympathetic about her; Luke and I hated her. She never seemed like the right person for Stoner, and she did a lot of damage to his relationship with his daughter. It was hard to see anything positive about her at all. Did she redeem herself at all in the end? Not in my opinion.
Stoner is a book that gets you thinking about so many things – what makes a life? chief among them? In the end, all three of us agreed that it was a fantastic book and a made for a great first book club of three discussion.
Several of the female students in my Young Adult Lit class have read and raved about Laura Nowlin’s debut novel If He Had Been With Me. They all told me that they bawled their eyes out and I do love a good tear-jerker, so I decided to give it a go.
Autumn and Finny have been best friends forever. Partly it has to do with the fact that their mothers are best friends, practically sisters. (In fact, the kids call each other’s mother aunt.) Partly it has to do with proximity; they live next door to each other.
Then, at the end of middle school the two, for reasons that are not really clear – but probably make sense to 12 years olds – the two stop speaking. In high school, Finny morphs into the most popular and beautiful guy in school and Autumn, ousted by the cheerleaders, finds herself sitting on the steps to nowhere with a group of outliers, one of whom, Jamie, ” a dark-haired Adonis, a Gothic prince” becomes her boyfriend.
The novel follows this cast of characters for all four years of high school, which seems like a bit much since they don’t really do anything. Jamie tries to convince Autumn to do the deed, but she puts him off. Her parents’ marriage falls apart. She and her mom continue to spend time with Finny and his mom even though it is AWKWARD. Finny starts dating Sylvie, a super popular girl. It’s all pretty melodramatic – kind of just like high school is.
We know from the very beginning that there is some sort of catastrophic accident and so we are hurtling (well, not really hurtling because this book is L-O-N-G) towards this event. I guess I can see how teenagers would find this story and this relationship between Finny and Autumn romantic and heart-breaking.
Sadly, it didn’t work for me. The book needed a really good editor, someone to tell Nowlin to strip away all the repetition. The main characters are tropey to the max: the manic pixie dream girl and the hot soccer star who shouldn’t love each other, but do love each other, but despite the fact that they have known each other their whole lives, can’t find the words to have a meaningful conversation. I didn’t particularly like Autumn, if I am being honest. Finny was a non-entity. Other characters were interchangeable and one-dimensional.
Apparently there’s a sequel where we see this whole story play out from other points of view. Why?
Razorblade Tears is my second book by S.A. Cosby (All the Sinners Bleed). It’s a straightforward revenge thriller that grabs you by the throat immediately and shakes the living daylights out of you until the end.
Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins have very little in common with each other except for the fact that Ike’s son, Isiah, fell in love with Buddy Lee’s son, Derek. Neither man had a solid relationship with their son for reasons that are more complicated than their sexual orientation. Ike spent several years in prison when Isiah was younger. Buddy Lee also spent time in prison. Ike has been out for a few years now, and has built a successful lawncare business; Buddy Lee lives in a rundown trailer and drinks too much. Ike is Black and married to his high school sweetheart; Buddy Lee is white and divorced.
Then their sons are murdered. And when it doesn’t look like the police intend to solve the crime, Ike and Buddy Lee join forces to find out what happened to them and make it right. And by make it right, I mean cause bodily harm to anyone involved.
It is often the case, and certainly true for Ike and Buddy Lee, that we only realize how much we love someone when they are gone. I mean, sure, these fathers loved their sons, but they also couldn’t abide the fact of their homosexuality. Their deaths stir up all sorts of unresolved feelings and also calls into question the validity of those feelings. Buddy Lee gets there a little quicker than Ike:
Derek was different. Whatever rot that lived in the roots of the Jenkins family tree had bypassed Derek. His son was so full of positive potential it had made him glow like a shooting star from the day he was born. He had accomplished more in his twenty-seven years than most of the entire Jenkins bloodline had in a generation.
Once the men start to ask questions about their sons, they find themselves in the crosshairs of a gang of bikers, and someone powerful further up the food chain. Ike and Buddy Lee are not without skills and they find themselves in some truly terrifying situations. Their partnership grows from wary colleagues to something like friendship as they take a wrecking ball to the mystery surrounding their sons’ deaths.
Razorblade Tears is violent, funny, heartfelt and a total page turner. It asks a lot of questions, not the least of which is what happens to a person who is not allowed to be their authentic selves. You will be rooting for these middle-aged men from start to finish.
Seventeen-year-old Kelsey and her mother live in a fortress of a house; it even has a safe room in the basement. Kelsey has always felt safe there and, in fact, “The black iron gates used to be [her] favorite thing about the house.” She acknowledges that her life isn’t like the lives of her classmates. For starters, her mother hasn’t left the house in 17 years. For another, she has to meet with Jan.
Seeing Jan was part of my mother’s deal to keep me. Jan was assigned by the state. I’ve come to rely on her, but I also don’t totally trust her, because she reports to someone else, who decides my fate. My mother relies on her even more, and trusts her even less.
Although previously homeschooled, Kelsey now attends high school and on her way home one day she has a car accident. Ryan, classmate and local volunteer firefighter, is first on the scene and “saves” her from certain death. His heroism lands the pair in the paper and that’s when Kelsey’s life starts to unravel.
She does something she shouldn’t and sneaks out of the house one night to see Ryan receive a medal for saving her life. When she returns home, she discovers the gate at the front unlocked, and when she makes her way inside, her mother is missing. It’s a big deal because, remember, mom hasn’t been outside in 17 years.
Megan Miranda’s YA thriller The Safest Lies is pretty much what you’d expect from a book of this type. A plucky heroine, a solid love interest, a couple red herrings, a mystery and enough action to propel the plot forward. I was pretty invested when there seemed to be stakes (who are the shadowy figures lurking around and I guess that safe room will come in handy after all, eh?) It doesn’t necessarily wrap up as satisfactorily or as believably as I might have hoped, but as a seasoned thriller reader, that’s to be expected.
Teens probably won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough.
I don’t read too much true crime these days, but Wish You Were Here, the story of a young woman who goes missing from her university residence in Sherbrooke, Quebec and is later discovered in a farmer’s field, sounded interesting and, the girl’s parents live (lived) in Saint John, NB, which is my home town.
In 1979 (the year I graduated from high school), a body is discovered. It’s later determined that this is Theresa Allore, a student at Champlain College, who had disappeared without a trace in November 1978.
Co-author Patricia Pearson, who was a friend of the family (and for a short time dated Theresa’s brother, John) recalls Theresa as being “intelligent, independent, witty” .
The police at the time seemed to do very little investigative work to determine exactly what happened to Theresa when she first went missing. In fact, they told the Allore family that
their daughter, a fearless girl who rock-climbed and skydived and was excelling at school, had overdosed on drugs (unspecified) and had been taken (surely) from her dorm to the creek a mile or so away by panicked friends. They’d heard speculative talk of her choking on vomit, or perhaps having an allergic reaction. The friends must have dumped her, the police explained, after stripping off her clothes and stealing her purse and tossing her wallet in a ditch. As friends do.
Many years later, John and Patricia try to do what the police never manage: find out what happened to Theresa. Thus begins their exhaustive search for the truth, which is hindered by missing evidence, a closed-ranks system (both at the college and within the police force) and the passage of time.
At the time this happened, I wouldn’t have been much younger than Theresa, but I can’t say I remember anything about her murder. Shows you how oblivious we sometimes are as teenagers. Wish You Were Here is a thoughtfully written (and how could it not be) examination of the devastating impact of a violent death, the problems inherent in the criminal justice system, and the dangers facing young women.
Visit John Allore’s blog Who Killed Theresa? Allore worked tirelessly for families of missing and murdered young women until his accidental death in 2023.
Although Gail Giles is now a well-known name in the world of YA, she had to start somewhere and that somewhere was with her 2002 debut Shattering Glass.
Young Steward, so named due to a complicated family tree, narrates the story of what happens when his best friend, Rob, decides to elevate class doofus, Simon Glass, from zero to hero.
Simon was textbook geek. Skin like the underside of a toad and mushy fat. His pants were too short and his zipper gaped about an inch from the top. And his Fruit of the Looms rode up over his pants in back because he tucked his shirt into his tightey-whiteys. He had a plastic pocket protector, no joke, crammed with about a dozen pens and a calculator.
Rob is the most popular guy in their Texas high school. “He wore confidence like the rest of us wore favorite sweatshirts.” When he decides to make a bit of a project out of Simon, none of the members of their group including the handsome Bobster and star football player Coop raise an objection. Coop, in particular, seems to form an authentic relationship with Simon, but Young has a different view because “Simon Glass was easy to hate.” Young can’t say no to Rob though, although he does wonder why Rob is so eager to change Simon’s social standing.
The novel follows Simon’s gradual metamorphosis from nobody to somebody and how this act also changes the dynamic between the friends. It is clear from the beginning that something awful has happened. Each chapter begins with a short comment from some other secondary character, which allows readers to anticipate an event that the main narrative builds towards. Let’s just say that the book’s title is not merely figurative.
The book examines bro culture to a degree. Why do people follow others even when their conscience tells them they shouldn’t? Young is sympathetic, but also frustrating as he makes one bad choice after another. Even his decision at the novel’s expected but startling climax does nothing to redeem him.
Shattering Glass is a solid book. It’s well written and there’s lots to talk about.
Out of the Easy is the story of Josie Moraine, a just-turned-eighteen-year-old who lives in a little room over the book shop where she works with her BFF, Patrick, whose father owns the store. Josie has lives there since she was twelve. Josie’s mother, Louise, is a prostitute in the employ of Willie Woodley, a madam who owns a brothel on Conti Street. The story is set in the 1950s.
I saw her hand first, veiny and pale, draped over the arm of an upholstered wingback. […] The voice was thick and had mileage on it. Her platinum blond hair was pulled tight in a clasp engraved with the initials WW. The woman’s eyes, lined in charcoal, had wrinkles fringing out from the corners. Her lips were scarlet, but not bloody. She was pretty once.
Willie, gruff as she is, is more of a mother to Josie than Louise has ever been and although Josie loves her mother, she also recognizes that she is bad news and mostly they stay out of each other’s way.
More than anything, Josie wants to attend college. When she befriends right-side-of-the-tracks, Charlotte, it looks like realizing her dream and getting out of New Orleans might be in the cards for her. But nothing is ever as easy as it seems, especially when Josie finds herself in the crosshairs of Charlotte’s icky Uncle John and a local mob boss.
Out of the Easy is jam-packed with plot, but sacrifices nothing because of it. I was wholly invested in Josie’s story and I loved all the secondary characters, including Cokie, Willie’s driver; Jesse, a local mechanic; and Sweety, Dora, and Sadie, some of the women who work at Willie’s.
Josie is constantly reminded of the kindness of others and that sometimes our true family has less to do with biology than we think.
Nicole B. Tyndall’s 2020 YA debut Coming Up For Air was a pleasant surprise. In her acknowledgments, Tyndall said that the story had a piece of her heart.
It started as pages from my high school journal, and now, somehow, it’s a real book. And I want to say that I’m grateful for that sixteen-year-old girl who was brave enough to write down all the ways she hurt…
The story definitely has the ring of truth.
High school junior Hadley Butler lives with her parents and older twin siblings. Her besties, Becca and Ty, and her passion for photography keep her grounded and busy.
Then she meets superstar swimmer Braden Roberts. If the rumours are to be believed, Braden is a player and the advice Hadley’s sister offers is to stay away because “he’s friends with Wyatt [her ex], and from what [she’s] heard, he’s even worse than him.”
Turns out, though, the rumours are far from the truth. When Hadley is tasked to attend a swim meet, circumstances put Hadley and Braden in each other’s orbit and the rest is history.
The first part of the book, which takes place during junior year, allows us a window into the teens as their feelings for each other grow deeper. These are two nuanced and intelligent people and you can’t help but root for them as they navigate “first love.” And it’s all sweet and romantic until it’s not.
Braden is an elite swimmer hoping for a scholarship to college. Then he gets an injury. Hadley’s life is pretty perfect too, until her mother’s cancer makes a return visit. How will these obstacles impact Braden and Hadley? Well, that’s the path this book travels.
I really enjoyed this book. The first part was swoon-worthy, really, and the banter between Hadley and Braden was terrific. The second half of the book is definitely more serious, but it wasn’t over-wrought. I think Tyndall handled all of the drama with a great deal of care for her characters. What happens when you love someone, but can’t help them?
I don’t know if this author has written anything else, but I would definitely read it based on this book.
The Ludic Reader 